The Hunt Lift Eat Podcast

Things are heating up in the woods and the pre rut activity is on! Join us this week as Carter and Luke talk about how the deer in both Louisiana and North Georgia are starting to get more active and signs of the rut are to come.

Deer are moving and we are getting stagnant waiting for the does and young bucks to lure out the bit mature deer from their norm of a routine. As things are getting spicy in the woods, keep an eye out for the noise that is going all around you! Dang squirrels can sometimes sound like state record bucks.

We're also going mobile with our new podcast platform! Our new platform allows us to be mobile and record from anywhere in the world which is pretty cool and convenient given our busy and sometimes unpredictable schedule. Apologies now for Luke cutting out towards the end but that Louisiana service in the swamps isn't doing us any favors. But stay tuned for the last few seconds of this episode to hear a special announcement / commercial re-enactment from Luke which will be for sure put a smile on your face. 
 
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Creators and Guests

Host
Carter Mckenzie
Carter grew up in North Georgia and from a young age had a passion for fishing and the outdoors. He was introduced to hunting as a freshman in college and had been hooked ever since. He has hunted in many states including black bear in Alaska, mule deer and antelope in Wyoming, ducks in Arkansas and North Dakota and most often, whitetail in his home state. With hunting has come a passion for cooking wild game and sharing it with others. Carter is a high school history teacher in John’s Creek, Ga where he teaches AP US history, AP Psychology, and World History. He also coaches several sports including cross country, tennis, and swim team. He lives on a small farm with his wife and 1 year old girl where gardening and self sufficiency are important.
Host
Luke Cox
Luke grew up an Army brat, but his family's farms in Grayson County, VA were constants in his life. He spent his childhood camping, fishing, hiking, and hunting. He barely graduated from Virginia Tech in 2013, where he studied History & Appalachian Studies (super useful in the real world). He somehow commissioned as an Army Infantry Officer despite spending most of his time at Hokie House (local watering hole) or the tree stand. During his second deployment to Afghanistan, he discovered powerlifting and competed in a couple Army competitions. On that deployment his started his MBA but dropped out the first day. Missing hunting season that deployment motivated him to take advantage of every opportunity to be in the woods & lit a spark that has since grown into an obsession. He figured the best way to learn business was to start one, so he launched HLE. He lives with his beautiful wife Caroline in Colorado Springs, CO. They have a young son, a little girl, and two dogs.
Producer
Cole Ried
Cole grew up around the United States as an Army brat but spent most of his time in the DC metro area. Having grown up in the outdoors with camping and fishing from a young age, hunting didn’t come until recently in 2019. He has now hunted whitetail deer, mule deer, antelope, and elk in various states such as Georgia, Colorado, Virginia, Wyoming, & Montana. Being a young hunter, Cole has spent time learning new ways to introduce game meat into his life and share it with others. Cole also has a passion of educating people on hunting and conservationism overall. Cole is currently pursuing his master’s degree in international affairs and political science while working for a private defense contracting firm based out of the DC Metro area. Cole, outside of hunting and fishing, enjoys training for half-marathons and spending time in his garden growing enough vegetables to share with his friends and family. Cole lives in South Carolina with his girlfriend and German Shorthaired Pointer.

What is The Hunt Lift Eat Podcast?

HUNT LIFT EAT is dedicated to promoting an active lifestyle centered around training, hunting, fishing, and the outdoors. We aim to educate and inspire individuals to pursue this lifestyle and build a community of sportsmen who positively impact the outdoor world. We offer training programs, lifestyle apparel & merchandise, and a nationwide network & community through our Team Member App

Carter (00:03.17)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Tuesday Tips brought to you by the Hunt Lift Eat Podcast. I'm Carter and we're doing our first mobile podcast finally. Luke's in the truck. What's going on, man? Hey, everybody.

luke (00:18.898)
Oh, you know, just drove four hours or I'm wrapping up a two hour round trip drive to pick up my laptop. That was in the shop. I live in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana now. So you're like two hours from everywhere. It's perfect. I love it.

Carter (00:36.95)
Two weeks from everywhere. Place is a goddamn geographical entity.

luke (00:39.063)
Yep.

luke (00:43.662)
pretty on point right there. So yeah, so I'm grabbing my laptop because I kind of need that to do this whole business thing. And I'm running back down, supposed to be back hopefully sooner than this, but it is what it is. So yeah, our new podcast host is coming in handy here. We're doing mobile, so that's awesome.

Carter (01:07.859)
What a novel idea.

Cool, dude. It's, uh, yeah, it's November 6th. And you and I have both been in, we've been in a tree or a blind, a good bit over the last week. And I think it's a good. Time to talk pre-rut, rut behavior as we're entering into November, they're definitely chasing here in Georgia. Things are heating up, man, and getting exciting, so I thought maybe we could share some.

luke (01:12.022)
getting with the times.

Carter (01:40.326)
of our favorite tips and tactics that people can use during these early weeks in November.

luke (01:48.246)
Yeah, definitely. This coming weekend is, or I think it's the 7th through the 11th, are where most, like the biggest boon and crocket, or the majority of the boon and crocket scored deer are killed. So this is like prime time across the board. These next, this next week or so, kind of nationwide. Now, obviously it varies geographically where you are. Our rut here in Louisiana supposedly starts early.

been seeing a lot of does haven't been seeing any chasing, but everybody keeps telling me it's going on. So I don't know. But uh, it's, it's that time. I'm getting excited. I'm planning on trying to hunt a lot this coming weekend and being a tree pretty much dark to dark every day. I don't have work times out perfectly with Veterans Day weekends. Since I worked for the feds, you got a four day. So John and I will be hunting pretty hard the neck from Friday to Monday.

Carter (02:42.546)
Yeah, not a bad gig during November, man.

luke (02:46.39)
No, definitely not. It all lines up pretty well, so I'm excited. This is a good weekend. I think it's gonna be a prime weekend right now, but for where we're at in Louisiana, usage already seeing chase. Are you mostly seeing young bucks chase, or are you seeing anything with good horns moving?

Carter (03:08.646)
Yeah, we're seeing young bucks fighting going on between young bucks. That's been fun to watch. Small six pointers and some dinker eights. Um, and you know, I'm primarily, I've got spots set up to hunt food, uh, early morning and evening spots to hunt my food plots, um, hoping what, just hoping to be there at the right time when the, if a big boy comes out to check does in the evenings, um, so those are out.

in my food plots every evening. So we're just waiting and holding on. We had a giant come in, the one I really wanna kill, King James, if you go back to probably this time last year, I was obsessed with this deer. He came in and winded me. Well, he couldn't quite decide what I was, but he wasn't thrilled with where I was in the blind this past weekend. So he came within 20 yards, but he was on the neighbor's property.

luke (03:40.768)
Thanks for watching.

Carter (04:07.174)
Um, and way too thick to get a shot. So, um, he was moving around, uh, checking those cause I was running, um, some dough estrus sent and he did exactly what giant bucks do. And he circled downwind about the only spot I could get winded on my property. Um, came basically right up to me and couldn't decide if he was happy or not stomped his feet a bunch. Um,

and then kind of went off. So the big boys are getting closer for sure for us here. So I'm hunting the food and then up in the mountains, I like to hunt a lot of really prominent doe trails, especially if you can find two doe trails that come together. I like to hunt those intersections and just look for those cruising bucks when they're just dumb and have their heads down and are just sniffing and chasing and running through the woods.

I like those spots a lot, especially up on those oak ridges or some of those saddles in those foothills of the Appalachians up there. Those seem to be good spots right now for those guys.

luke (05:19.166)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great, great point. Hunt those trails anywhere, like if you know where there's like prominent doe bedding in the area.

getting between where the does are bedding and where they're gonna be moving out. The bucks are gonna be checking all those areas. They're gonna be looking for that hot dough. This time of year is so great because the does aren't fully hot yet, but the does are just so ready. They're chopping at the bit to start breeding.

And so they're starting to get reckless and they're gonna be cruising a lot more than they're gonna be actually physically chasing. And so that's a huge advantage. And this is a great time to catch them when they're exactly what you're talking about. Their heads are down, when they're acting a little stupid, when they might even smell you. They don't care about the wind because all they care about is finding some poo nanny.

Carter (06:18.642)
Yeah, and I think the does actually, they must know that they're safe with me because they don't give a shit right now. They're everywhere every time I hunt. And I'm a believer, you know, if you got a doe in front of you, then you got a live decoy. We can shoot does in the end of December or January. Because sometimes the rut happens into December here too. It can be hard to pin down between the mountains and where my house is. But I also moved on my cameras to those doe trails.

Um, looking for those cruising bucks and, uh, found some good sign with series of rubs and ending with a scrape on a field edge and stuff like that. Um, so that was rewarding to set up some of my, uh, reveal cameras on those corridors that these bucks are traveling and get some good pictures of bucks. I haven't seen before on these other properties. Um, so that was reassuring. A couple of them are daylighting.

of course, when I'm at work, you know, so maybe this weekend we can make something happen.

luke (07:23.266)
Yeah, I'm jealous. I would keep texting John as we're sitting in public land. I get John and I had very different tactics the other day.

I saw more deer, I think, but then I hunted the same spot in the evening, I saw a lot of does, I saw one spike, I was real tempted to shoot so I could go back home. But I didn't shoot him, it's bucks only right now. I would have just shot a doe, there's a big nanny in there. I would have just shot a doe and caught it good, because I don't, anything I'm hunting here in Louisiana is kind of bonus hunting for me, but I was hunting a field edge, right, where there's kind of a strip of trees, of timber that comes in.

Carter (07:43.998)
Yeah.

luke (08:04.258)
And so it's just a natural corridor. And there's kind of a bunch of tree islands within there too. So they'll hop through there and it was good, but it's public land and because it's good and it's easy access from the road that evening, I had a bubble walking, like he was road hunting, driving around right past me. And then he parked with probably an hour of light left, walked this fat ass out there and then walked right back in before shooting light was over. So he took right in front of me. So.

Spoiled my entire hunt and I was like, yeah, John's right. I got to get deeper in the timber. So I'm going to change my tactics up a little bit, even though I've seen a lot of those and get in deeper and try to get away from all the road hunters and every bub, but I knew better. I was just kind of being lazy and it looked good. And I had seen a lot of deer there the night before. So

Public land, man.

Carter (08:52.806)
Yeah, that's always tough on public man. It's tough because we talk about like, yeah, you want to get way back in there. And, you know, everybody knows that's a good tactic, but you can walk past some great spots right by the, you know, by the trailhead or where you park too, that sometimes people overlook. So it's kind of tough to make that decision sometimes.

luke (09:50.968)
back. You hear me?

luke (10:00.857)
Can you hear me?

luke (10:31.128)
Can you hear me?

Carter (10:35.446)
You there, Luke?

luke (10:37.336)
Yeah, can you hear me?

Carter (10:39.366)
No, I can't hear you, if you can hear me.

Carter (11:14.47)
Well, I think we lost Luke for the rest of this episode, that old Louisiana, Louisiana cell service he's got going on there. So I'll round it out with the last two things that I'm thinking about this time of year. I'm actually going to start running a decoy. I've got a Montana. Decoy that I like using, I've got a buck and a doe, and I think that big buck, he smelled the doe estrus urine that I was using.

couldn't make up his mind because he saw my field but didn't see the doe and he was hesitant to come out of the woods and into that field and I think if I would have had a decoy out and that could have convinced him to come to the field edge maybe come in a couple steps and check that out so I'm gonna give the old decoy a try and try and get a hold of this big guy and put that kind of out in front of me a little bit see if I can entice him in and play around with that I haven't quite figured out exactly how to use

the decoys, so it's kind of a learning opportunity for me. So I'm going to give that a whirl this weekend. And then the other thing I'm definitely doing is I'm grunting at every buck I see, especially those younger ones where it's either there's no pressure. It doesn't matter if you mess it up or not. I have no intention of shooting, shooting them. So it's just gathering intel and information and seeing how they respond to grunt calls and things like that. So I'm grunting at every buck I see, or if I hear chasing in the woods.

I'm grunting at them trying to bring them in especially you know cool clear mornings When it's quiet for sure so I'm gonna give the decoys a Rip this weekend and try and grunt at them

You back?

Carter (13:00.998)
No, you're not back. All right, cool. Well, folks, that's gonna round us out for this week's Tuesday Tips. We wish everybody good luck haunting the rut. Hopefully it's heating up wherever you are and send us some pictures. Send us your pictures of your successes. Send us pictures of your trail cam giants. Send us pictures of the one your buddy killed, the big one. We wanna see him, we wanna share that with you guys. So good luck. As always, we appreciate the help of you guys. We'll talk to you next week.

luke (13:32.782)
You hear me?